Tuesday, August 08, 2017

Former US President Barack Obama was recently interviewed for an upcoming documentary on the life of the late Israeli statesman, Shimon Peres, by Moriah Films, the two-time Academy Award™-winning film division of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Barbra Streisand, a close personal friend of Peres, will also be interviewed for the film, which is slated for release in late Fall. President Obama and Ms. Streisand join a distinguished list of interviewees which includes former US President Bill Clinton, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several members of the Peres family as well as close friends and associates.

The seed for the Peres documentary, Never Stop Dreaming: The Life and Legacy of Shimon Peres was planted in January 2016, when Mr. Peres was being interviewed for a Moriah documentary about David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister.

At that time, Peres asked Academy Award-winners Richard Trank, principal director, producer, and writer for Moriah Films, and Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center - and the only rabbi that is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences - if they wanted to do the definitive documentary about his life. Without hesitation, Hier and Trank, said "yes".

Immediately after the interview, President Peres told Hier and Trank, “I know Moriah Films, I’ve watched a numerous amount of your films and they are outstanding. I want you to consider doing my life story. I know it is in the right hands.”

Moriah Films is the film division of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and was created to produce theatrical documentaries to educate both national and international audiences. It focuses on the 3,500-year old Jewish experience as well as contemporary human rights and ethics issues. Moriah has produced 15 films to date, two of which have received the Academy Award™ for best feature documentary, The Long Way Home (1997) and Genocide (1981). Moriah’s films are currently streaming on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and iTunes.